Yes a bit peevish indeed. I was up way too late to deal with life at all.
Merely a week into summer break, and the kids are bored. I finally unpacked Gabe's book bag knowing full well his report card was inside. Call it immature but I was not ready to face it, that issuance from hell. Black and white proof of Gabe's snail paced progress. Most of the time, I manage quite well to live in a place called Denial, right next to Oblivion.
I am not really that bad anymore, its taken years to get to a place where reality doesn't sting like a slap in the face. But there is something about that end of the year summation that just makes me sick. It brings back too many memories of a time when I wished wholeheartedly for rapid improvement in Gabe's learning ability.
The progress report is very different from the typical report card that the girls get. It is broken down into goals, with attainable percentages of completion for the set goals. The hard cold percentage of completion number might as well be an F. At least if it was a letter grade there would be cause for speculation. Speculation enables me to continue to live in Denial. I could at least tell myself that it was a high F, perhaps so close to a D- that the points were negligible. As you can tell I lead a rich fantasy life!
The fact is all of Gabe's percentage of completion numbers are below 20%. That means that there is a whole 80% of the time that Gabe does not complete the required task. Arrrrrghhhhhh. Of course there are lovely side notes as well like, "Gabe needs maximum coaxing to complete this task".
I guess I have made some progress. I used to cry for an entire day, and be miserable to Jim. In fact, he always knew when it was progress report time. Now, I at least manage to not cry by avoiding the bitter truth for a week or more.
This year, they had included a new method of driving home the truth. Included were graphs of his progress. At first I was unhinged when I saw them, panicked that I had to absorb another method of slap down reality. Bold black lines connect the week to week progress, forming peaks and valleys from hell. All right there, screaming "you suck as a MOM"..........."you are the failure"
Then I noticed that there was a two week period where Gabe made huge strides. I found myself trying to think back to that time. What was happening that Made Gabe so sharp and on task that week? The huge strides were present on all the goals, and all within the same time period. The huge peaks were followed by deep valleys the next week. I still cannot recall what was happening during that time period.
But,it did serve as a reminder to me that this is what raising Gabe is all about. It has always been this way. Weeks of sharpness, followed by weeks where he remains static. More and more I get the process. Its about the enjoyment of my child and the sheer joy that he brings to our life. It is all about an undefinable word......patience.
